- Urban Design
- Studies
- Re-tooling
Re-tooling
How can we rebuild our older cities? Can new thinking about development be used to help an existing industrial city be reinvigorated?
To study this, a section of Chicago along Cicero Avenue was the subject of an urban design studio taught at Harvard to see what ideas could be combined to rebuild an existing underutilized area. The location was well served by transportation (rail, water and road), located between two major airports, and was surrounded with significant residential communities. However it was lacking investment and was not growing, but rather decaying.
The work was to understand its significantly underutilized aspects, rethink what could happen over the long term, and to propose a way to encourage the “remaking” of the community by proposing an urban model for future industrial/manufacturing.
The propositions put forward commercially viable concepts that are long overdue in our cities. Much needed, underutilized assets are to be repositioned in the marketplace of today and tomorrow.
Projects were located along Cicero Avenue; each was sited as best suited a design concept for an entrepreneurial idea of urban redevelopment. As such, they varied in size and location, as needed.
A few solutions are shown: the first one is a development concept that takes advantage of the existing RR tracks to make a information and distribution spine for seeding light industrial growth. Next is a project that conceived of a new notion of public park, one that takes connects disparate parcels to make a new version of a whole park; also shown is a commercial and exposition center to highlight the existing fabrication and manufacturing work in the area; last is an education center, and its growth from an initial outline with infrastructure to a full campus.
Work began with the design of an urban pathway, done in parallel with research into incubation strategies for entrepreneurial development. Initial concepts were studied for their growth over time. Sketch massing models and overall site models were used together..
Deep research into economic and incubation growth models was undertaken, with the goal being to identify different strategies to encourage investment and development. Each project was tasked with having a “value-added” proposition as a key element.